


Remembrance

by peonylanterns



Series: Timeskips [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Biting, F/M, Female Reader, Fingering, Genocide Route, Rough Sex, Smut, cum kink, noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:00:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5733991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peonylanterns/pseuds/peonylanterns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Earlier you said that you didn't remember me at all," says Sans, "but it looks like your body recognizes me well enough."</p><p>Violence mixed with tenderness. Noncon.</p><p>Critique heavily encouraged.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He had forgotten how fragile you were, how soft and delicate the tracery of veins flowing blue beneath that expanse of skin.

Sans runs a finger along the thick artery running down the length of your neck and follows it below the ripped collar of your shirt, his touch cold against your heated flesh. You lay as still and as quietly as you can, but your breath hitches a little when you feel his thumb brush against the swell of your breasts.

You're a little surprised by how gentle his movements are. He's got you pinned beneath him, his pelvis grinding hard into your hips and blue gravity crushing you into the floor, but it seems like he's taking care to avoid pressing against the most damaged parts of your body. You can feel him rubbing slow circles into your chest with one hand, the other tracing the inwards curve of your waist and ghosting over the mottled mass of bruises starting to form along your torso, contusions blooming like blue ink dissipating in water.

The way he runs his hands over you almost makes you forget that it had been he who'd marked you in the first place. Your body responds with the same premise in mind, flushing and and dripping with every touch in spite of the undercurrent of fear prickling your nerves.

Then Sans pulls your knife out from his pocket and all of your blood freezes to ice.

When he feels your body tense beneath him, he reaches a hand forward to cup your cheek affectionately. His voice is quiet and low as he hushes you, as he tells you to calm down and stay still, as he slips the flat of the blade beneath your shirt with an agonizing slowness. The metal rests cold against your skin until he flicks it upwards, the blade mercifully tilted away from you, and cuts easily through your clothes.

You let out a strangled little yelp when you hear the sound of ripping cloth and recoil instinctively. All your composure forgotten, you try to twist your body away from him, squirming and struggling against the grip of his magic before he slams the knife right next to your head, the sudden blaze of his left eye blinding you with cyan light.

“I thought I told you not to move,” he says.

There’s a faint sting on the edge of your cheekbone where the tip of the blade had grazed you before shattering into the tiled floor. You can feel a trickle of blood forming at the surface of the shallow cut, then a sensation like wet glass against your cheek as he presses his tongue to it, runs it across the length of the wound.

You'd told yourself that you wouldn't cry, but already you can feel a heat prickling behind your eyes, a low whimper building up in your chest that you try and fail to suppress. Something like pity flits across Sans’ face for a moment before he curls his mouth backwards in a sneer.

“That’s really all it takes?” he says, and savagely yanks your jeans and underwear down your legs, “Pretty pathetic.”

He trails his hand between your thighs and shoves two fingers inside of you, makes a small surprised noise in the back of his throat when they slip in easily.

You whisper a desperate plea for him to stop, "Don't, oh please, don't, don't -"

Sans ignores you. He curls his fingers, the hard bone of his fingertips digging hard into your sensitive flesh, and you draw in a shuddery inhale.

"Earlier you said that you didn't remember me," he muses aloud, "But it looks like your body recognizes me well enough."

He’s circling his thumb lightly against your clit and a burning pang of shame rushes through you because you're starting to relax into his touch, your body desperate for some sort of reprieve from the battering that it's gone through. There's a tightening coil of tension forming inside as he keeps on stroking you, a reluctant pleasure that makes you grimace and grit your teeth in frustration.

His movements inside of you are almost instinctually precise, as if he knows exactly how and where to caress you to bring you close to the edge. He's touching you slowly, coaxingly rubbing against your core and coating his phalanges with your slick. Your hips buck involuntarily into his palm, liquid arousal pooling between your legs, and you bite back a soft moan that turns into a humiliating cry of frustration when he drags his hand away right as you're about to reach your peak. 

Then he's speaking softly in your ear, the deep rumble of his voice sending a shiver up your spine.

"I've noticed that you tend to hold on to certain memories through resets," says Sans, "So I'm going to try out a little experiment."

"I'm going to make this hurt. Enough so that you'll remember it every time you come back. But maybe I'm wrong," he tugs at the waistband of his shorts, letting his erection rest against your inner thigh, "Maybe you'll forget and try this again. And that's ok," he continues, his voice colder than you've ever heard it, "Because I won't. And when the time comes, I'll gladly remind you, as many times as it takes."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol I don't know how to write porn :^)

Part of him thinks that you look better like this. There's a beauty in damaged things, he's come to realize, and the human body is no exception. Cut it and out floods a stream of brilliant reds. Break it and it blushes in tinges of purple and blue. Maybe this is why Sans has come to like the look of you sprawled beneath him, bruises spreading like watercolors over the canvas of your skin and your limbs heavy with the weight of defeat.

Yet there's a hesitancy in his satisfaction. He can still recall the warmth of your skin pressed against him, your voice quiet and soft in the velvety dark. The caress of your palm along the length of his spine. It's images like these that haunt him in this timeline: little mementos of a disappeared past, intersecting and intermingling with the present, that direct his attention to the gentle slope of your neck as he snaps it, to the startling redness of your mouth when you spit out a broken tooth.

And isn't this intimacy, flesh pressed against bone and you sprawled before him, vulnerable and waiting? Your clothing disheveled, a brief glimpse of skin. Sweating, panting, crawling on the ground on all fours. Is this surge of arousal so surprising? It's a pulse of raw sensuality, born of desire and disgust and a strange ache of tenderness.

Here you are, flushed with shame but dripping from the very core of you, half-lidded eyes lowered in submission. You shiver in fearful anticipation when he slides the head of his cock slickly over your folds, just enough to let you feel the girth of him pressed against you. Then he sinks into you inch by inch, parting you like a knife.

Sans presses his teeth to your neck in an imitation of a kiss and lets out a soft and shuddery sigh of pleasure in your ear as he hilts inside of you. There's the clench and flutter of your muscles as your body struggles to accommodate him, so exquisitely tight around his length that he nearly comes right then and there, and then the pained little whimper you give when he starts fucking you slow and hard. And god, somehow it feels so right to be sheathed in you like this, with his ribs pressed hard against your breasts and your heart beating fast against his bones. It's like relief washing over him in waves, lust mixed with self-deception as Sans shuts his eyes and tries not to think about the way it used to be - your fingers laced between his and his name on your lips instead of those awful choked gasps that you let out with every one of his thrusts.

He buries his face into your shoulder and breathes in the scent of you, that vaguely floral smell he's come to associate with ash and butterscotch, dust and burnt typha. The rush of your blood pulses beneath his cheekbone, reminding Sans of human physicality, of the carnality of flesh without magic, and he bites down hard into that unmarked skin, capillaries breaking and hemorrhaging under his teeth. The sudden jerk your body gives beneath him makes his cock ache with need, makes him dig his fingers into your hips as he bucks deeper inside of you.

By now you've gone quiet, your face tilted away from him and eyes shut tight as he uses you, breathing shallow little breaths and clenching your fists against the floor. And he knows that you're trying hard to keep some illusion of control, he's seen you close yourself up like this a thousand times, crumpled on the ground and waiting for death.

"Baby," he murmurs, and grips your chin in his hand, "Look at me."

His voice is so inviting, so strangely incongruous with the whole situation that you do as he says. There's such an overwhelming resignation in your gaze that Sans feels something in him faltering, some well of guilt and self-loathing he'd long ago sealed up bubbling up again within him. For a moment he stills inside you, doubt flaring in his empty chest before the glimmer of your broken knife catches his eye. And that hard knot of bitterness inside of him winds itself tighter and tighter again, choking off love, choking off compassion, choking off all those things that make up a monster's soul.

He wonders briefly if this is what it's like to be human.

Sans hitches your legs across his waist and pulls you close, then slams his pelvis into you so hard that you're sure he's torn something inside. You scream this time, you scream so loudly that your voice echoes down the hall and he has to clap his hand over your mouth to keep you quiet. You're cringing away from him, you're crying again, and it's better this way isn't it? Hasn't he craved something painful and deeply personal like this, intimacy and brutality all at once?

Your cries are muffled against his palm and he moans into your neck as your muscles seize in panic and tighten around him. He presses his body hard against you, the softness of flesh encircling him and drawing him into thoughtless bliss, and the pace of his thrusts begins to quicken as he nears the edge of orgasm. For a few precious seconds his mind goes completely blank, white hot pleasure coursing through him as he comes, spilling his load deep inside of you with a few long and drawn out strokes.

And in the post-coital haze that follows, he collapses against you and tries to catch his breath, savoring the satisfaction of release until he pulls away and catches a glimpse of his come flowing from between your thighs, the blue of his ecto tinged red with blood.

So this is what it's like to break apart a lover, cloying sweetness turning to ashes in one's mouth. And this is what it's like to drown in utter self-contempt, wanting to sink into the earth and disappear.

Your voice is quiet in the silence that follows afterwards. "Was that as good as you thought it'd be?"

Sans looks at the bruises forming on the insides of your legs, at your red-rimmed eyes and wet lashes, and feels his last vestige of decency crumbling inside of him.

"No," he admits, "Not really."

"That's what I'm beginning to realize too," you say, and turn your gaze towards the broken knife. 

There's not much Sans can say to that.

"You know what comes next," he says and begins reaching for his magic again. There's the familiar pull of energy rushing towards him, bunching up and swirling into form, "I'll make it quick."

"Wait," you flick your eyes back towards him and he hesitates, "Please."

He's long since let go of the pressure on your soul, so you very gingerly raise your arms up and cross them over your eyes, "Let me rest for a little while. Give me - give me a little time to brace myself. You owe me that much at least." Peeking through the gap of your elbow, you can see the outline of a canine skull forming in front of you, light gathering in its open maw, "Come on Sans, even if I could kill you like this, what the fuck am I going to do? Crawl to Asgore? Maybe roll towards him?"

It's a fair point.

"Alright," says Sans, and the blaster closes its mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got too long, so I'm breaking it into two separate parts. Expect an update fairly soon.

Sans dissipates his magic with a snap of his fingers, watching warily as you raise yourself up by your elbows and shrug off the torn remnants of your shirt. You're scanning your injuries with a practiced eye, wincing a little when you place a hand gingerly to the space between your thighs.

He takes in the sight of you: bright smear of blood across your pallid cheek, the indent of his teeth across the set of your shoulders - and thinks of broken fingers smoothing his sternum, of your body leaving deep red stains against his embrace, the soft haze of memory distorting into the clarity of the present.

 _You did this,_ your movements seem to whisper, _so don't look away._

You’re gently probing the purpling bruise on your shoulder, trying to gauge the severity of the wound, when Sans takes off his jacket and tosses it into your lap.

"Get decent," he says.

You raise an eyebrow at him, but slip your arms through the jacket's oversized sleeves anyway. It smells like him, like snow with a vaguely metallic tang, cold and crisp. There's a spray of your own dark blood along its front, still damp and soaking into the blue cloth.

An uncomfortable silence stretches between the two of you, both pointedly avoiding the other's gaze.

-

You're sitting close to one of the corridor's stained glass windows and its golden light illuminates your body, casting your shadow in sharp relief. For a moment you look like an illustration he'd seen from an old storybook about the Delta Rune. It had been a watercolor of the angel from the surface, its features indistinct in the blur of sunlight radiating from behind it, stretching an arm out to a crowd of monsters and leading them up from below the earth. Sans had dwelt a long time on that image as a child, digesting it slowly over years spent staring up at the gem-encrusted ceiling of Waterfall, thinking that were there any truth to the prophecy at all, its fulfillment would surely be as dim and strained as that artificial starlight.

You’ve always been so achingly human, so fearful and full of resentment, but death has changed you so much, its touch evident in your ready acceptance of that familiar violence lodged deep inside of your soul. It's given you a brittleness in your calm, strung you out to a tapering and quivering tension. You're so sickeningly lovely like this, so disgustingly beautiful in your treachery. Even like this, violated and bruised, there's something venomous in your vulnerability.

Despite everything, it's still you. And he knows that even at your worst you're still his black hole. He's caught in your trajectory and being drawn inescapably closer in every timeline.

-

You take the intermission you’ve been given to catalogue the worst of your injuries.

A nasty gash across your thigh, another spanning the length of your back. Something broken in your chest that makes you spit up blood when you breathe too deeply, something badly bruised in your abdomen that sends a paralyzing ache through your body when you sit up for too long. Right ankle sprained, left shin broken, the skin around it turning an ugly shade of violet.

Then there’s the bite of despair in your chest that digs itself deeper with the slow, thick trickle of Sans’ seed from your entrance, the plaintive longing for some form of warmth. This entire timeline you’ve been wholly removed from the kindness of others, willfully rejecting it in favor of the mechanical comfort of steel in your hands. And it had been alright for the most part. You’d embraced it, even. It made the gritty feeling of dust under your nails bearable, made it easier to cut a long line across Papyrus’ neck, across Undyne’s plate armor and into her determination-infused soul.

( _It’s ok_ , says the sweeping motion of your arm with its every sideways stroke, _I’ll be joining you soon enough._ )

The scorch of white fire, the sickly crunch of broken bone - these things you can take. But not the intimacy steeped in animosity that came with his body buried within your own, not the malice in his kiss, the viciousness of his thrusts.

You’d lied when you said you didn’t remember him. Of course, of course you did. How could you ever forget the feeling of his insistent tongue between your thighs, his hands gripping at your lower back, pulling you as close to him as humanly possible? It’s enough to thoroughly salt the wound and leave a nictitating sting along your very soul.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this, I hope you like pretension.

“I’ll reset,” you say, your voice deceptively soft in that dense quiet, “I promise. So do me one last little favor.”

Sans grunts to show you that he’s listening.

You’re leaning against a broken pillar, hands brushing fragments of shattered tile away to clear a space next to you. “Come here. Just...sit next to me. So I don't have to be alone for a while.”

There's a genuine hunger in your eyes, echoing the brightly colored scales of a viper, iridescent poison laid out with an undeniable sincerity. It's an honest desperation, and it's this that makes him almost consider obliging you despite the transparency of the trap.

“Papyrus is dead because of you,” says Sans quietly.

“He doesn't have to be,” you reply. When he makes no movement to join you, your voice finally breaks, you feel heat prickling behind your eyes, “F-fucking...you fucking raped me. Please. Just do this for me.”

He considers the pink froth filling your lungs, the labored breathing that indicates slow suffocation. The pallor of your lips. Your shallow inhale and the violent cough that follows. The globule of blood you spit on the ground and the streak of red left behind on the back of your hand when you wipe your mouth.

Bright-irised human with his heart in your fist, dragging him with you deep into the undertow. Sink together, breathe in the same cold water - it doesn’t matter as long as the cycle continues. And it will, he knows it will. So he decides to take the bait.

Then there's that familiar flow of energy in the air again, swirling around his open palm, triggering in you an instinctive panic (and you know now that you'll never forget that vibrant shade of blue, the fear of it will follow you until the very end). You flinch away, you cover your eyes with his sleeves, waiting for that inevitable burn.

"Don’t move," he says.

A familiar flash of cyan in his hand, a flick of his fingers, and there's something cold piercing your torso. Translucent blue strikes you through like a pinned moth, the rounded edges of bone peeking just barely from between your ribs.

Sans seats himself close enough to touch you. He leans his weight on his hands and glances at the azure speared through your chest.

“That thing’s not corporeal right now,” he tells you, “But any sudden movements and -” He draws a swift line across his neck and makes an exaggerated gagging sound.

“Are you really that afraid of me?”

He shrugs, "Doesn't hurt to be cautious."

Slowly, carefully, you stretch an arm towards him, and he does not move away. Your fingers slide across the cool tile as they inch towards him, consuming the empty space between the two of you like a high tide, until they rest gently on his phalanges.

“Hey,” you say, “What I said before - it wasn’t true. I did remember you.”

Sans snorts derisively.

“I knew that already,” he says, and flips his hand over to grip your fingers tightly in his own, “You’ve always been a terrible liar.”

-

The minutes tick by. Sans counts them off with the flutter of your pulse, which beats a hastening rhythm as your borrowed time draws to a close, escalating from a steady thrum to an anxious racket of rushing blood.

You laugh nervously, “It’s stupid - but I’m a little scared.” Your knuckles are white with tension, fingers clenching so hard that they shake, “You’ll make it fast, won’t you?”

“If that's what you want.”

An audible swallow. Voice wavering, thick with repressed emotion, “Please don’t use the blasters.”

The fear apparent in your speech catches him off guard, and in your sad little negotiation of his execution methods he sees how defeated you truly are. It should be a relief to him - in this state of mental exhaustion you won’t be able to skip back to the refuge of your last save - but it's not.

You look so afraid. You’re even trembling a little, as if it's the first death all over again, but he knows that it’s the uncertainty of resetting that you dread.

-

You are the crux of possibilities in this concentric circle of a world. An unwilling martyr with a knife in her uncertain hand.

 _Cut here_ , says the blade, _And you can leave. Or stay your hand and continue walking this labyrinth of thorns._

-

The cut on your cheek is coagulating, dried blood smudged below your eye and around the corner of your mouth.

“Look here for a sec,” says Sans. You tilt your face towards him and he licks his thumb, then wipes a long wet stripe along your cheekbone, smearing away the stain. You hold tight to this brief window of weakness, you cup the hand lingering at your face in your own and thread your fingers through his. The cyan in his eye flickers briefly in response - he stiffens his back and you feel the magic running you through give a quick throb of warning - but nothing else.

His eyes are pale and sharp in their sockets, and you think of lanterns in the dark, lights around which moths revolve until they fall, with tattered wings, into incandescent flames. Do they die in ecstasy, having finally touched that transfixing white fire? And when they burn, when the dust of their bodies melts away into fine smoke, are they finally cleansed?

You are cinders, you are ash, you are an empty shell of bitter longing, but still you reach out with your undeserving arms for a glimpse of real intimacy. You crave absolution - but you are soiled, you will carry the mark of your sin until the end. Yet you say his name like a prayer, you soften your gaze and grip his fingers tightly.

He leans forward, hesitates, and in that pause you impulsively rush to meet him, you press your parted mouth to his in a coppery kiss. When you pull away there’s an aftertaste of iron and nectar, tangy and sweet on his tongue, filling him with a painful nostalgia that makes him untangle his hands from yours to clutch at you possessively, like a drowning man to a piece of wreckage.

Sans lets himself sink into your touch, lets you slip your fingers up his shirt and into the slats of his ribs, dragging him towards you until his body fits into your own. And it hurts to have him pressed against you like this - he’s all edges and hard angles against your wounded flesh - but he’s warm and he’s real and he’s so much more than you deserve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol I don't know how to write fluff :^)


	5. Chapter 5

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”

Caitlyn Siehl, “Start Here”

-

With your arms around him like this, with your head tucked against the rigid bone of his shoulder and the softness of your thighs encircling his hips, Sans realizes more than ever how hopelessly entwined he is with your every iteration. Covered in dust, baptized with golden pollen, it doesn’t matter - you’re still his human, his barely restrained beast with the mark of his teeth on your bare shoulder.

Have you always looked this exhausted? Have you always clung to him so fervently? Or are these things just the result of that gradual wear on your soul - the product of those fifty-two deaths stacked up in your heart?

-

You close your eyes when he feels for the outline of your body through the thick blue cloth, his hands running from your hips to the ridge of your back. Vertebra by vertebra, he traces the framework upon which all flesh is built: muscles, blood, skin, all wrapped around a scaffolding of bone.

The shaky breath you let out when he touches you sparks a shameful swell of arousal within him, and he's painfully hard again, cock straining visibly against the fabric of his shorts. Sans thinks about unzipping that jacket and lying with you, forcing himself inside of you and fucking you slowly - and hates himself for it. But the press of your mouth against his neck, the brief flicker of tongue in that kiss - god, this is how you draw him in (how you’ve _always_ drawn him in), with that unexpectedly tender lilt in your voice when you say his name and the pass of your hands over his bones.

Outside, the wind kicks up dust like curls of pale smoke over the evacuated city. The grey road that leads into the castle is crusted with a mixture of dirt and ash. Beyond the gates of New Home, the Underground’s silent pathways are lined with the shattered remains of monsters. The rivers and pools of Waterfall are clouded with muddied water, and beside the mouth of that humid cavern, a bright red scarf lies twisted in the mud.

But those things are temporary, aren’t they? This distorted world has no real sense of permanence or continuity. Only memory persists here. And in memory you are soft and clean still, in memory he has never hurt you, no, never -

-

He’s handling you so delicately that you feel as though you’ve somehow shifted timelines, but the chill of your nakedness beneath the jacket and the salt tang of blood in your mouth remind you otherwise. Yet he holds you like you're made of glass, his grip firm but cautious.

The zipper is pulled up to your throat. You raise your hand to it and drag it down until the metal clinks open at your hips, then touch the edge of his jaw with your fingertips. Coaxingly, you lay your mouth against bone, against clenched teeth.

Sans slides his fingers haltingly along the iliac flare of your hip, then looks to you as if for permission.

“Like this,” you say, and guide his hand upwards, towards the shadowed skin beneath the curve of your breasts.

The corner of his mouth twitches upwards in a momentary smile. His white pupil catches your eye and your heart twists in your chest - you loosen your fist around the jagged piece of tile concealed in the jacket’s left pocket and bite your lip.

He palms the soft flesh, circling a nipple with his thumb before he kisses the hot hollow of your throat, then the darkening bruise on your shoulder. You feel the wetness of his tongue on your skin again, like cool water against the inflamed imprint of teeth, and slip a hand into his shorts to wrap your fingers around his cock.

“You’re sure?” he asks, and you nod.

With his arms supporting your back, Sans shifts you into his lap, sliding the tip of his cock between your labia as he slicks it with his own come. Then he eases himself inside of you, pushing deeper with slow and shallow strokes, and watching you closely with the dim light of his pupils.

It hurts much less than you'd thought it would. Yet still there’s a lingering soreness between your thighs, and before long a familiar pain pierces through your core that makes you wince and tense up around him.

“No, it's alright,” you murmur when he pauses, “Just give me a sec. I'll be ok.”

You curl your fingers around his broad shoulder blades to steady yourself, then smoothly roll your hips into his pelvis, each slow gyration sinking him further inside. Warmth, the slightest edge of pleasure, swells with every inch of him that your body swallows. You’re faintly aware of Sans pulling you against his chest, tightening his grasp as he chokes out a strained, “Oh my _god_.”

By the time he’s fully sheathed in you, you’re a trembling mess. Hooking your fingers around the backs of his ribs, burying your face in his shirt to muffle an embarrassing whimper - you nearly go limp in his arms when he finally starts thrusting against you.

A steady, unhurried rhythm. His hands on your hips, his face imbued with such a wistfully tender expression that it hurts to think this will be over soon. Even in the heat of this palpitating moment, this dissolving drop of gold in a timeline streaked with red and grey, the iciness of the unfired bullet in your chest remains as a cold reminder of the end.

But right now all that matters is the honeyed throb of arousal flooding through your blood, thick and sweet in your veins, building up to a feverish rush of ecstasy.

“Sans,” you cry out, “Sans, Sans, _Sans -”_

You shakily reach for his hand, lacing your fingers together as you come undone in his arms, his voice soothing you through your orgasm before he presses his teeth to your open mouth. And then he’s saying something to you, chanting it under his breath before it’s lost in his desperate moan of release as he comes - his hips bucking hard, cock twitching inside of you as it pumps you full of his seed, and then after the initial forceful spurts of come, the weak, jerky aftershocks as he milks himself dry.

For a few seconds, the two of you stay locked together and collapsed in each others’ loose embrace, neither wanting this brief peace to end. But eventually Sans pulls out, and you feel his warmth spilling out from your entrance. Still, he dips towards you for one last kiss, and when your lips brush against bone you close your hands over the sharp tile in your pocket, then carve it deeply into his ribcage, into the space opposite your own heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT (7 Dec 2016):   
> Holy fucking shit, I received an actual [fanart](http://plsdontkinkshameme.tumblr.com/post/154151977602/a-steady-unhurried-rhythm-his-hands-on-your#notes) of this scene, courtesy of [plsdontkinkshameme](http://plsdontkinkshameme.tumblr.com/). It's absolutely beautiful. Go check it out!


	6. Chapter 6

The first thing any monster learns about humans is the species’ terrible proclivity for violence. Despite the frailty of their physical forms and their inability to use magic, the strange intensity of their souls makes it possible for them to turn monsters to dust with nothing more than a simple scratch. It’s something that, until recently, Sans had trouble believing. But now he knows better.

The gash you’ve carved across his chest is shallow, barely a millimeter deep, but in it he can feel your simmering resentment, the accumulated weariness of entire lifetimes - even a brief spark of satisfaction that glimmers like a beacon. And buried and burning hot beneath all that, a desperation that digs through his bones and into his soul.

Earlier, with the blood still wet on the inside of your thighs, you had looked at him through the sharp corners of your eyes, scleras bright as sunlight and pupils reflecting his image. A glance like the tip of a blade. When he’d seen it, Sans had known that you would cut him apart like this. And he had known that he would let you.

-

A means to an end. That's true for the both of you. Isn't it fitting that this is how it should happen?

There’s ivory pulled through your chest, protruding like a white spear from between your ribs. A jagged piece of tile, a lance made of bone - neither pierces quite as deeply as the knife does.

He's still holding you against him. Your blood soaks through his shirt and into his bones, where it seeps and spreads like a permanent stain.

“you stupid fucking coward. what did you think was going to happen?”

Sans can feel the edges of his fingertips crumbling away, the magic knitting his body together starting to dissipate. With the last of his strength, he pulls the empty shell of your body closer.

The approach of death dulls his coordination. He fumbles for your hand, and it takes a minute for him to manage to lace his fingers through yours again.

“you little idiot.”

He’s lost all feeling in his extremities. Already, he can see a fine powdering of dust beginning to shed from the rest of his body. The fading remainder of him buries his face in the crook of your neck as he clings to consciousness.

“please.” His voice breaks. “don’t make me do this again.”

-

* You were close, you know. You could have ended it.

 

Who are you?

 

* Take a guess.

 

Are you me?

 

* Not exactly.

* More the other way around, I think.

 

What’s happening?

Am I dead?

Is… is any of this real?

 

* As real as memory. That is to say:

* Does it matter?

 

Why have I never seen you before?

 

* You have.

* You do.

*You’ve always seen me, in little glimpses and fragments. Which, coincidentally, is all that I am.

* But that's not what I'm interested in right now. It's not what _you’re_ interested in. What you want to know is where to go from here.

 

What do you suggest?

 

* What do _I_ suggest? I can't suggest anything.

* All I am is a remnant of memory from a past you never lived.

* A series of half-formed images and emotion, without will, without any kind of conscious thought.

* A scrap of determination drawn from a dead child’s soul.

*It's you who does the choosing here, not I.

 

I don't understand.

 

* That’s alright. It doesn't matter whether or not you do.

* All you need to do is decide how you’ll proceed.

 

Do I… really have to?

All this repetition, all this death, all these meaningless lives that I can hardly even remember…

There’s something wrong with this world, something inherently flawed. How can anybody make progress when there’s no permanence to anything?

Is this world broken on its axis? Am I the center of the circle, the crux, the axle, the perpetually spinning wheel?

And if so, is it not better to flip a broken machine’s OFF switch than to let it break itself down?

 

* You’ve been tired, haven’t you? You never would’ve gone this route otherwise.

 

Yes.

 

* Will you take it again?

 

No.

Not again.

 

* Well then.

* What next?

 

Would it be possible to stay like this? Outside of the timeline and caught in the nothingness…

It’s not so bad, I think.

 

* You could. Is that what you want?

 

… No.

I have to go on. There isn’t anything for me here.

I don’t know what I’ll do, and I don’t know what will happen in the end, but I can’t just leave it like this, can I?

 

-

 

You wake in a torrent of golden petals and settling dust. A thin trickle of light falls from the distant ceiling, illuminating the walls of a subterranean cavern. The garden you’ve fallen in is slightly damp. Somebody’s been tending these flowers.

Slowly, with your head bowed and your heart heavy, you stand up and walk forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of this story. But there will be a continuation. Keep an eye out for it.
> 
> There is a small reference to another game in this chapter. I actually made it pretty obvious, but let me know if you catch it. :^)
> 
> Thanks to [neroli9](http://archiveofourown.org/users/neroli9) for beta-ing this for me. If you like Sans/Reader Mob AUs, check out her fic [A Puzzle Just For Me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6776461/chapters/15487282). It's got some of the best worldbuilding and character dialogue I've ever seen.
> 
> Feel free to contact me at my [tumblr](http://peonylanterns.tumblr.com). 
> 
> I encourage you to share your thoughts and critiques on my work. Feedback is what encourages writers to continue their works and improve. It also makes us really, really happy.
> 
> Thanks!

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please consider leaving a comment. If you hated it, that's fine too - tell me what I need to improve on so I can produce higher quality stuff. Thanks.
> 
> You can contact me at:  
> peonylanterns.tumblr.com


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